Homestead mailing list

[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:
> Optogeorgia.
>
> Do you know anyone named George?  The common Greek word for ‘farmer’
> is a combination of  ‘Ge’ (earth, land, as in Geology) and ‘Eorge’
> (work, as in the root word for Energy and Ergonomics).  So ‘George’
> means ‘works the land’. While the state of Georgia is named after
> King George, that same form is also the Greek word roughly for
> ‘farming’.  I wanted a word for the point of view from a homestead,
> from one who works land.  Do you recall W.C. Bryant’s poem 
> "Thanatopsis" (A View of Death)?

Thanks for the lesson..
freaky.  I haven't thought about that poem in 25 years.

> The things you notice, the mental processes you employ, and the
> evaluation and conclusion of everything is changed forever once
> someone has seen it as a homesteader.  I’m not talking about
> pontificators and wannabes, but someone who has stood there by the
> garden, or grain field, or flock or herd and known that how they were
> to fare for the coming season depended on the Earth (the ‘Ge’ part of
> the word) directly. Take a ride through the country from the nearest
> town to your homestead with a non-homesteader and when you arrive ask
> them what they saw along the way. Then make that same trip with a
> subsistence farmstead and ask what they saw. "Those dead trees at the
> bend in the county right of way, I noticed how much fire wood there
> was in them.  And that overly wide shoulder at the bottom of the 
> hill, if there were a way to fence it that would be, what, three or
> more weeks pasture for a cow.  That vacant spot between those two
> buildings, I couldn’t help but mentally calculate how many cabbages
> you could fit in three.  And all those leaves and trimmings piled up
> on the median …. that would fill up three compost bins."

OMG, I really am a homesteader because I think this way!!! <g>

> Half-baked and fearful views about what is going on in the world now
> are a dime a dozen.  Yet here on this list are a good number of
> people I happen to know for a fact have their boots in the muck,
> their hands in well worn work gloves, and their weathered eye on the
> field.  It is those people’s views I want to read because they are
> unique, seen from this Optogeorgia, a land-working view, viewpoints
> not easily had from elsewhere.

Can I not be both, that is can I not have half baked or fearful views
about things and still wear muck boots to bed?  I think we all saw
pictures of my hands after using my well worn work gloves to husk black
walnuts.<G>
All I am saying is that we are on a journey, James.  You may be at your
destination, where you want to be, but some people have never started,
some people have taken baby steps, and some people are struggling to
keep their waterers unfrozen.


> It’s just getting to be a little more effort to sift out the pearls
> from the rotting oysters amid all the verbose blather here.  But that
> comes and goes on this list as it does on most.  First, I suppose I
> am reminding myself, is to consider the source.  Is the view coming
> from the worker of the land, or is it from some other focus … or none
> at all?

Well, from recent conversations, I think you might be referring to Bob
here, but I am pretty verbose so maybe you mean me, too.  I do however,
post homestead type stuff more than not, I think, although I will admit
that in the past year, I have gotten a bit off track and posted about
politics and my fears and now, tonight, personal health information that
I probably shouldn't have posted. But it is all rather tangentially
related to life, and by default homestead life.  But hey, like Lynda
says, some of us really are who we project ourselves to be..the good
with the bad...I have faults, as you know...but my life is pretty much
an open book.  I get pissed just like the next person.  I have moods,
too.  I am weak, yet I am strong.  You just can't paint everyone into a
homesteader/nonhomesteader-with us or against us-right or wrong kind of
model as there are shades of gray because people are at different places
in life.
I want you to continue with your diatribes, because they are wonderful
and give me lots to think about.  I respect that you give it so much
thought-the result, obviously, of time properly managed on a homestead
which allows time for reflection.  However, it would be nice if
sometimes they were not so confrontational or 'pointed' to other list
members.


Bev

--
The true significance of Sacajawea's involvement in the Lewis & Clark
expedition is that it was the first documented trip in history where men
asked a woman for directions and followed them, allowing them to arrive
at their destination.